Vinitaly showcases ancient Greek and 'polyglot' wines

(AGI) Rome, March 22 - The Vinitaly International 2015 wineshow showcased a wide variety of wines ranging from the mostancient Greek wines dating back to the time of the Odyssey, tothe wine of the Celts, and to that of the House of Bourbon.However, the star of the show was 'polyglot', a wine in 42world languages, including Swahili, Tigrinya, Russian, Japaneseand Arabic, which was chosen as the symbol of the exhibitionaimed at getting visitors acquainted with the best of Italy'swine-making heritage. These are only some of the highlights ondisplay at the stand of the Coldiretti's Centro Servizi Arena,in the corridor between pavillions 6 and 7, at the VinitalyInternational 2015 wine show, which was inaugurated at 9:30a.m. this Sunday, March 22, in Verona. The rediscovery ofhistorical wines is the main innovation introduced by Italianwine producers in order to appeal to Italian and foreignpurchasers, said Coldiretti, Italy's National Confederation ofFarmers. Innovative products also concern the future, like a'diet' wine or the wine bearing a label in 42 differentlanguages, especially dedicated to the Show. The VitisVinifera, the mother-stock of all modern wine cultivars, hassurvived in Georgia for over 13,000 years, where it gave lifeto the art of wine-making in large earthenware jars buriedunderground. Basing its production on this tradition, theImola-based Tremonti vineyards started to produce wine in thisway. The owners of the vineyard, Sergio, Vittorio and DavidNavacchia, called in Georgian experts to teach them how to uselarge 400-litre jars in the wine-making process, and nowdisplayed their first 600 bottles of a wine called "Vitalba".It is made from an Albana wine grape, which is left to maceratein jars for 120 days with their peels, with the addition ofendogenous yeasts but no sulfates. "From the prehistory of wineto legend; it comes directly from the Odyssey", saidColdiretti, specifying that the idea of making wine from jujubedates was developed by Martina Buccolini, a young wine producerat the SiGi vineyard in Macerata (Marche), exactly like thewine that Ulysses drank in the Island of the Lotus-Eaters.Homer wrote of some members of Ulysses's crew who, after theymade landfall, were tempted to eat the lotus fruit which eracedthe memory of their wives, families and homesickness. The lotusfruit that Homer mentioned is likely to have been the Zizyphuslotus, a wild strain of jujube dates, and the spell cast by theLotus-Eaters was not provoked by narcotics but simply by thealcohol content of the drink. . .